


I Knew You First

by DustToDust



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-30 09:50:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustToDust/pseuds/DustToDust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of unrelated DickTim drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr request for the pairing.

It feels like Dick blinked and Tim grew up in that split second. Grew hard and lean and confident some time when he wasn’t looking. Dick still expects Tim to be tiny. A whipcord thin teen with wide eyes and a habit of second guessing himself every second.

What he sees though is a grown man who doesn’t once think he’s ever wrong. Who rules a board room with the same calm confidence he runs the city with at night. He’s not that much taller but the muscle he’s packed on makes the old names die in Dick’s throat.

Die and wither to ash because Tim is nothing short of breathtaking now.

It’s not a new observation. Just one he’s never allowed himself to have when one of the most accurate names for Tim was jailbait. A hundred observations shunted to a black hole in Dick's mind. Things about his eyes and nose. The way he laughs and always leans into Dick’s touch. His terrible humor and how it takes real work to loosen him up enough to share it. The way he gets loopy after a really bad stretch of sleepless nights and the fact that he’ll sneakily steal all the fruit off Dick’s plate if it’s left unguarded.

"Yes?" Tim looks startled to find Dick patiently waiting for him to get off the phone. His tie, a dark blue that had caught Dick unexpectedly off guard, crooked already despite the earliness of the day. Dick would put good money on Tim not going home after patrol the night before like he said he was going to do. "Dick, did you need something?"

"Yeah," Dick calculates the sleep debt Tim no doubt owes himself and ignores the shoddily wrapped presents shoved under his jacket in favor of a new plan. "You need to finish that," _that_ is a large stack of papers that Dick’s sure could have been delegated, "up in ten minutes or less. Less is preferable. I’ll be back in a bit."

He shuts the door on Tim’s sour look and protests to turn to Tam. The woman arches an eyebrow at him when he smiles down at her. “Tell me he has nothing scheduled.”

"He doesn’t," Tam confirms with a sad shake of her head. "He doesn’t know why though and went out to get busy work to fill up his day."

"Yeah, Tim does that," Dick sighs and pulls out his phone. Debating the merits of pizza verses Chinese. "He forgot his sixteenth birthday too. I’ll get him out of here for the rest of the day."

Tam makes a pleased noise as Dick dials for pizza delivery. A few cheesy slices, the bad kung fu action flicks he wrapped up earlier, and a soft couch to lull Tim to sleep wasn’t exactly the party Dick was planning but it’ll do. He can always think about how very legal Tim now is later.


	2. Knowing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was for Dick reacting to Babs telling him about Tim's long standing crush.

"No, you're wrong."

The words sit on the tip of his tongue ready to slide off but Dick doesn't say them. He doesn't say them because this is Babs and she is never wrong. Not when it comes to Tim and not when it comes to seeing things that Dick himself should have realized a long time ago.

What he ends up saying instead is, "That's not fair."

Because it's _not_. It's not fair that she's telling him this now. When the cowl rests heavily on the back of his neck, and Dick's own Robin is upstairs scowling at the world at large while Tim is half a world away and not likely to get any closer by his own choice.

"You asked," Babs says and he can hear her weariness and cruel amusement over the phone. She's gotten more sadistic as the years have gone by, and takes more delight in his discomfort than she ever used to before. "I warned you that you wouldn't like the answer."

She's right, because Babs is always right but Dick can't say anything about that. Can't say anything else as he sinks back in his chair and feels the hundred different aches that come from just _wearing_ the Batman suit. There's a silence that he's gotten used to and Dick allows himself to recognize it. To put a name to it.

It's Tim's voice that he's missing. His measured voice that goes sly when he tells the absolute worst puns Dick's ever heard, and goes high when Dick does something he thinks is stupid. It's his logical observations and the surprising leaps of his mind that almost always tend to be spot on. His smile small and crooked as he assures Dick that things are alright. That things will work out.

And somewhere, in all of that, was something hidden that Dick never saw for himself and probably never will now. Because Dick hasn't had Tim for longer than he's been gone. Dick lost him when he gave Robin to Damian.

The boy needs it. Dick will stand by that decision, and will not regret all the good that it's done the angry child. He sees the changes in Damian every day. Small but spreading like cracks. He will not take that back --he can't-- but he can regret the way he did it. Regret that he didn't bother asking, that he didn't lay it out logically like Tim probably needed, and that he hadn't given Tim any choice in it at all.

Dick feels his lips curl up in a smile that's mocking and bitter. How often had he raged at Bruce for doing exactly what he's done, and how little did Bruce's reasoning matter to him then?

"It's a low blow, Babs," Dick finally says because that's true too. There's a dozen things she could have said that would have been equally true, but she's unerringly chosen the one truth they both know will hurt him the most.

"You needed it," Babs won't apologize for it. "And I think it's gone on unremarked long enough."

Babs has never really been one for romance. When they were both younger and stupider? Yes, she'd loved romantic gestures, but nothing that went over the top and her tolerance of that kind of sentimentality has shrunk over the years. It's not a surprise to him that she wouldn't approve of endless pining from afar. She's always been a big believer in spitting it out and getting it over with.

"It's going to have to go unremarked for longer," Dick says because Tim is taking avoidance to entirely new levels. He'd thought he's seen him pull in before but it has nothing on what Tim's doing now.

Dick hates it, but he can't help being relieved at it right now because it buys him some time. Time he's going to need to digest what he's been told, to pick apart the years of interaction with Tim, and time to figure out how he feels about all of it. Right now he's stuck on disbelief.

"Not forever though," Babs says and it's a reassurance that this won't last.

"Maybe," Dick knows it won't but he also still remembers the anger in Tim's face and voice before he left. The uncontrolled lashing out that Dick's honestly never seen in him before. It won't be forever, but Tim holds grudges tight and it's going to be a while. "Thanks, Babs. It's always enlightening talking to you."

"Take care, short pants," Babs says full of amusement before the line goes silent and Dick's left to wonder all on his own.


	3. Matching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asked for them having their names tattooed on each other and someone finding out.

Jason nearly kills himself laughing when he finds out. Completely on accident according to Dick but Tim doesn't quite believe the older man when he says it with a smirk.

"You two are such fucking saps!" Jason manages to hoot between long and frankly painful bouts of laughing. Tim does his best to ignore the way the sound fills the Cave and agitates the bats as he finishes typing up the night's reports. Dick's taking way too long showering off the sweat from patrol for it to not be deliberate, and Damian has put in his disgusted eyeroll before slouching off upstairs to practice being the tortured teenager he's turning into. Alone, in his room, and Tim knows no one will see the boy until breakfast when he's made yet another small alteration to his appearance they will all ignore.

Damian is well on his way to looking like some unholy union of hipster and emo. Tim's letting Dick handle the rebellion that's bound to come up sooner rather than later.

"Who's going to wear the dress?" Jason asks when he gains control of his laughter enough to slump next to him at the console. His grin is wide and begging for a fist to wipe it off his face. "No, wait. You're both so fucking gone over each other someone's going to have to force one of you to wear a tux. Do you guys have matching outfits too? How about a couple's costume for Halloween?"

Jason is a dick. They all know it and they all love him regardless. Tim doesn't look away from the screen as he says, "Sure, didn't you see the tattoo below my name? It's a picture of our first Halloween when we went as Bert and Ernie. It's on Dick's ass."

Jason slides down to the ground with a choked noise and starts laughing again. Delighted and insulting all at once. Tim sighs and starts mentally flipping through the file of blackmail material he has on Jason. It's a startlingly small folder because Jason doesn't really feel shame at all and it's hard to blackmail him. For such a small matter he might be better off just pouring dye in his shampoo again.

"My other other ass cheek is blank and waiting for our wedding vows," Dicks says before he slips his arms around Tim from behind and places a loud kiss on his head. Tim can smell the soap he used and his skin itches to get out of his suit and clean off to, but he's almost done with the report.

Jason makes a few gagging noises between some seriously unmanly giggles that doesn't fool anyone of them at all. Jason's the sappiest and most romantic fool in the whole family. He just hasn't found the right person to unleash it all on, and Tim's looking forward to the day when he can pay the man back.


	4. Footsie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt meme for trying to play footsie.

"Fuck, Dickhead," Jason growls before shoving the table with his foot. Making the cups rattle and the files flap as he pushes it far enough to smack Dick in the gut. "Keep your freakishly long legs on your side."

"Really?" Tim sighs as he looks up at the other two men. Jason looks ready to keep going to pick a fight and Dick's grinning through the wheeze. Utterly unrepentant. It says something that the only other reasonably adult like person in the room is _Damian_. And considering Bruce is close enough to be counted as well it's saying something Tim doesn't like at all. "Can we save the hair pulling until after we've finished here?"

"Just keep your feet to yourself," Jason gives in as graciously as he ever does. With a glare and growl no one has pointed out makes him seem the closest to Bruce.

And that should have been the end of it. The inevitable pettiness ended quickly allowing them to settle down and try to figure out what they've missed. The one crucial thing hidden in the paper trail of a five year old case that's been sticking in Bruce's craw so badly. A _lovely_ task made all the more enjoyable by Bruce's _delight_ with the fact that none of them are finding anything at all.

It should have ended then and there with all of them going back to the paper drudgery, but not five minutes pass before Damian jerks and snarls from his seat next to Tim. "Grayson!"

"Whoops," Dick says with wide eyed guile that none of them actually buy into as he straightens up. Looking both cheerful and sheepish.

Damian glares harder for a moment before turning his nose up in disdain. The earbuds come out then as he draws his hood up over his head to begin ignoring them all. Later than it usually takes with the boy. Sadly, it's still a far more mature response than anything Jason or Dick usually come out with.

"You're actually six," Jason sneers. Which is just about the funniest thing coming from him

"Really," Tim sighs and shakes his head before turning back to the files he has. Silently resigning himself to the fact that it's going to be one of _those_ nights. The kind where someone is going to pick and annoy everyone else until noses start bleeding. A knee jerk response when stress gets high even though it's the absolute last thing they need right now.

With that in mind Tim ignores the first few nudges at his right foot. Tim looks up grudgingly only when the foot nudges him and doesn't back away again.

Dick smiles at him. It's a small, affectionate smile with hints of amusement in it. Not the antagonizing grin he gave Jason, or the helplessly laughing one he gave Damian. A second foot joins the first, trapping Tim's between them and the tapping is more than just a touch.

_Really?_

Tim feels his eyebrows climb up when he realizes what Dick's been trying to do. Footsie. In the Cave. Only Dick, and Tim should have cottoned on to what the man was doing earlier. Tim shakes his head and turns back to the files with a small smile. He'll have to talk about that with him later because the last thing Tim wants to do is explain the concept behind PDAs to Damian while Jason does his best to make life hell for them. Their relationship too new still for him to pass up the opportunity to be an ass about them.

Dick nudges him again and Tim pushes his other foot forward to trap one of Dick's feet as well.


	5. Puns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt meme for sexting.

"How do you two sext?"

Tim miss types a word and frowns at the auto-correct before deleting it. He looks up from his phone and thinks about denying, but it's Steph. He has no lie in his arsenal that she'll buy."I don't think I'm very comfortable sharing that part of my new relationship with you?"

"Yeah, no, you'll cough up the details sooner or later if Babs doesn't get them to me first," Steph says with a look of scorn that's as strong as her punch. "What I meant is his name is _Dick_. How do you guys sext without laughing?"

Ah. Still not a question Tim wants to answer but at least it's not one that'll make him pray for a random ninja attack. "Sometimes we don't."

"Sext?" Steph asks disbelievingly.

"Without laughing," Tim says wryly. "You've met Dick. If you think the puns and double entendres don't happen all the time you're clearly concussed and need help."

Steph laughs. A little helpless even as she winces from the pain of it. Both the physical pain of laughing while concussed and the mental one at his brilliance. "Oh no, you just encourage each other don't you? I knew I should've objected to you two when I had the chance."


End file.
